The effect of fatigue and habituation on the stretch reflex of the ankle musculature

Many ankle injuries are said to occur when athletes are in a fatigued state; therefore, studies investigating the role that fatigue plays in ankle injuries are warranted. Furthermore, the contributions of the stretch reflex in countering the injury mechanism are still unclear. We hypothesized that (1) fatigue would impair the reflex response, (2) there would be no differences between genders, (3) habituation would be present, and (4) fatigue would exacerbate the effect of habituation. Forty healthy subjects participated and were divided into treatment and control groups. Stretch reflex measurements were taken for the tibialis anterior (TA), peroneus longus (PL), and peroneus brevis (PB) muscles in response to a rapid inversion perturbation. A fatigue intervention was administered to the treatment group, while the control group sat quietly. Post-test measurements were recorded within 5 min and reflex latency (RL) and amplitude (RA) were calculated. RA decreased significantly, however a significant improvement was noted in RL in the PL and PB muscles. The effect that peripheral fatigue has on RL should not be considered a cause of ankle injuries. However, the diminished RA may suggest reduced dynamic stability after fatigue. Habituation was present and was exacerbated by fatigue, indicating that reflex testing is affected by fatigue and habituation, which must be taken into consideration in future studies.